External Links

An advocacy group for London seniors won’t be making a fuss about missing the bus pass.

“We’re disappointed, but we understand what council is trying to do,” Pat Moauro, head of the 4,000-member local chapter of CARP (Canadian Association of Retired Persons), said Tuesday. “I don’t think we will take any action.”

City council voted Monday to make several changes to London’s bus-pass program, bumping up subsidies for all low-income Londoners, but taking away the 25 per cent discount seniors have enjoyed for decades.

The revamped subsidy program will be a two-year pilot project, set to start in January 2018.

Before the meeting, the local CARP chapter sent a letter to council voicing “strong objections” to the proposal to drop the seniors’ subsidy, which was approved earlier by a council committee.

In the letter, Moauro voiced concerns about the impact of the subsidy loss on low-income seniors.

But Tuesday, he expressed satisfaction low-income seniors would be protected under the plan.

“I have to agree that those who can afford to pay, it’s only fair,” he said. “We are grateful they will keep it for low-income people who will be using buses. There are low- income seniors using transit.”

Seniors now pay $60.75 for a monthly pass that costs $81.

The conciliatory response to the decision from CARP might come as a relief to a council that a few weeks ago suddenly found itself with a transit-subsidy headache.

City staff recommended last month the bus-pass program be overhauled, taking away the subsidies for seniors and blind people.

Instead, a 50 per cent subsidy would be provided to low-income earners, with enough money in the city account to help about 1,200 people.

That proposal not only alarmed blind people, but set up what critics called a Hunger Games scenario where about 6,000 low-income earners would fight for the 1,200 subsidized bus passes.

On Monday, after a sometimes-tense debate, city staff were directed to find enough money, perhaps up to $2 million, to give bus pass-subsidies to all low-income Londoners who need one.